Day: July 2, 2011

During the summer of 1992, the First Division of the Football League became the Premier League. The first season of the Premier League was played out against a backdrop of building sites as clubs sought to bring themselves into line with the Taylor Report, and it was a season that – and this seems extraordinary to say now – saw Manchester United instated as the English champions for the first time in twenty-six years. We would come to see over the coming years just how much this season would become a page turning in the history of the game in England. Our most sincere thanks go to the original uploader. Follow Twohundredpercent on Twitter...

With thirty minutes left to play in Dresden last night, it looked as if the England team was heading out of the 2011 Womens World Cup. A goal down against New Zealand, having picked up a draw against Mexico in their opening match, they looked all but out of the competition, but two goals from Jill Scott and Jess Clarke managed to pull an iron from the fire, and they now go into their final match against Japan knowing that a draw will definitely see them through to the quarter-finals and that even should they lose, they could still go through to the quarter-finals should results elsewhere go their way. To an extent, England should have not found themselves in this position in the first place. They started reasonably brightly, but went a goal behind thanks to some fairly horrific defending which allowed the excellent – and outstandingly named – Sarah Gregorious to score from close range. Things could have got worse for England managed to haul themselves back into the game, but optimism at the result must be limited by the knowledge that their final group match will be against a Japan team that was oustanding against Mexico and that, should they get through to the quarter-finals of the competition, they will have to play one of the two most impressive teams in the entire tournament so far,...

Next up in our brief series on summer take-overs, Mark Murphy has an update from Port Vale. Port Vale have a functioning, constitutionally sound, a recently-elected board of directors, a six-figure investment deal (seven-figure, if you include various forms of sponsorship) on the table and a recently-appointed manager who masterminded a strong League Two promotion challenge before being lured away to his home-town club midway through last season. What could be better? Plenty, naturally. This is Port Vale. Since our last Valiants update, events have taken numerous twists. And the determination to ignore the results of the June 1st EGM’s board elections remained strong for much of the time. Indeed, if there was an equivalent determination to forget politics for a bit and focus on the team, Vale would have promotion clinched by Easter. The biggest twist is that the remnants of the Vale board which survived the EGM, plus recently-appointed Chief Executive Perry Deakin, have taken a more confident public stance – aided by some ill-advised public comments from director-elect Mark Sims and, for the first time, some misjudgements by supporters group North London Valiants (NLV). Meanwhile, local entrepreneur Mo Chaudry, whose bid for control of Vale via a 51% shareholding has caused all the 2011 in-fighting, managed to shut up for a bit, before thinking out (very) loud about the prospects of overturning the EGM results through...